ELECTRONIC RECORDS
CLEAN-UP GUIDELINES
For whom is this guideline intended?
This interim guideline is intended for any CoE staff member who has a collection of official
and transitory records.
Official records provide evidence of a business activity, decision or transaction related to the
functions and activities of your business. Transitory records are records of limited, short term
business value, or not business related at all.
It is a practical step-by-step guide on how to clean up these records. Included are shortcuts
and issues to consider when deciding whether or not to keep the records, how to integrate the
records you are keeping into the CoE taxonomy, and how to transfer official records to the
Corporate Records Centre (CRC).
Why should I clean up my electronic records?
The primary reasons for keeping official records are to support business activities, to provide
evidence of compliance, or because they have future business, financial, legal or archival
value to the City of Edmonton.
Keeping unmanaged records can be a liability to the City of Edmonton because:

they may be incomplete

more than one person may be managing the record

no one is managing the “official” record

incorrect versions may be used in making business decisions

exposure to risk (FOIP, legal, operational).
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As the number of records increases, the search time to find a specific record increases.
Storing large amounts of personal and transitory information on the network also leads to
longer IT back up, restoration time, and other costs to the corporation.
Further information to assist with managing your records can be found in the following
policies and guidelines:

Corporate Records and Information Management (A1410B)

Employee Code of Conduct (A1100C)

Acceptable Use of Communication Technology (Electronic Mail) (A1429B)

Fraud and Misconduct – Reporting, Investigation and Whistleblower Protection (C522)

IT ‘Disk File Cleanup’ Guidelines.
Whose responsibility is it to clean up electronic records?
You are responsible for cleaning up the electronic records that you hold. In the case of
unattributed (orphaned, inherited, abandoned) records on a shared drive, the responsibility for
clean up resides with the business area that is holding them.
What are we cleaning up?
All electronic records currently residing on your shared or personal drives including:

emails

databases

word, excel, and powerpoint documents

imported documents (pdfs, jpegs, tiffs, audio and video streams)

inherited (from predecessors or staff no longer in the area)

collaboration sites (Sharepoint, e-room).
All electronic records currently residing on offline storage devices including:

cds, floppy disks

laptops, portable handheld devices (pdas)

usb drives (memory sticks and cards).
Consider removing corporate information stored on home computers as well.
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How do I go about cleaning up a collection of electronic records?
The goal is to:

identify records that should be kept because they are official records

delete records that are transitory and no longer required

identify records still required for business reasons.
Here are step-by-step instructions for cleaning up a collection of electronic records. These
techniques are not always appropriate for databases. Databases will be addressed at the end of
this guideline.
1.
Set up electronic folders using the CoE taxonomy
Set up e-mail and network folder directories with the same functions and activities
as the CoE taxonomy. Sub-activities and records series will be created
by the individual
business units using them.
Here is an example:
Set up a temporary folder for records that require further investigation or records that
are unused.
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2.
Organize and classify the records
Find out the background of the records. Try to answer the following questions:

If you did not do so, who created these records?

What were their responsibilities?

When were they created?

What are the records about?

Are the records linked electronically to other documents?
If yes, be aware links may be broken if documents are moved.

Are the records still used?

Is the version history of the records clear?
If not, determine if there is a final version.

Do these records have a relationship with any other records held by the City?

Are they the predecessor of a current set of records?
If yes, perhaps the current records have a retention schedule that may
be applied to these records.

Are they used in conjunction with another set of records?
If yes, consider the two sets of records together.

Are they a duplicate of another set of records?
If yes, consider which set is official. If there is no further business need
the duplicate set, they are a transitory record and can be deleted. If
for
your area
has an operating procedure that its official record is paper, it may be useful to
keep an electronic copy for convenience.

Is the record personal or transitory?
If yes, it may be deleted.
3.
Identify any relevant documentation for the remaining records
Consider whether there are any existing policies, procedures or documentation that
would be relevant to these records, such as a retention schedule, either for these
records or for their successors or predecessors.
Move official records ready for disposal into a temporary folder. Structure this
temporary folder using the new CoE taxonomy and keep it until the City of Edmonton
acquires an electronic records management system.
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4.
Conduct an initial survey of the records
Do not look at every record, but try to form an overall impression of the record
collection. Look at file/e-mail titles, dates, folder titles and, for e-mails, to and from
information.
Consider the following questions:

Do the records conform to your business area’s functions and activities given the
information you have already collected?

Do the contents of the records match up with their titles?
If the answer to either of these questions is no, you will need to be more
cautious in your deletion decisions. Discussion within your business area
is
advised.
5.
Develop business area rules and best practices
Based on the information you have collected so far, develop some basic rules and best
practices for the record collection in your business area. These will include
identifying types of records that can be deleted, now or at a future date, and types of
records that are still required for everyday business and should be integrated into the
CoE taxonomy. Developing the rules and best practices is a repetitive process, as you
will want to go back to them to add new decisions as your experience of working with
the records grows.
6.
Use short cut measures to clean up obviously unnecessary records
The techniques for doing this will vary depending on the type of electronic record.
For information in shared and personal drives, the most efficient technique is to use
the directory management system. In Microsoft systems this is called Windows
Explorer. To access Windows Explorer, right click on the start button and select
explore. This provides a view of the directories, folders and records in folders that you
have. You can set it so that it provides details of each document, including title, size,
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document type, date created, date last modified, date last accessed, document owner
and document author. Browse this information to identify records that are out-ofdate, have been superseded by later versions or have not been used for some time. It
is probable that these records are transitory and can be deleted.
Permissions may be required when working on the shared drives. Discussion within
your business area is advised.
Reduce or eliminate non city records such as audio files, streaming media, and
MP3 files in your personal folders.
For e-mails, the following techniques can help to identify messages that are no longer
needed:

sort e-mails by date and assess all those over a certain age

sort e-mails by addressee and assess all those sent to/received from certain
individuals

sort e-mails by subject and assess those relating to completed business

sort e-mails by size and assess large e-mails to determine if are no longer
required.
Currently the e-mail system saves deleted items in a folder rather than actually
deleting them. It is important to ensure that e-mails you mean to delete are actually
deleted. You can do this by setting your deleted items folder to empty whenever you
exit Outlook. To do this, take the following steps:
7.

on the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Other tab.

select the ‘Empty the deleted items folder upon exiting’ check box.
Manage remaining records
This involves looking at each file individually to assess its value in accordance with
your pre-determined rules and best practices. Document-by-document review should
only be used as a last resort, once you have used the methods above to reduce the
number of records for examination. The aim should be to spend the minimum amount
of time looking at each record.
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8.
Disposing of records
Keep your temporary folder until the City of Edmonton acquires an electronic records
management system.
If you are disposing of offline storage devices such as CD-ROMs and floppy
disks it is advisable to physically destroy the media. Contact the CRC.
If you are disposing of electronic copies of records held on personal and shared
drives, delete the records in the usual way and ensure that the ‘recycle bin’ or the
‘deleted items’ folder is also emptied.
How should I deal with databases?
The cost or logistical implications of amending an existing database may be so great that the
best option is to wait until a records management system is acquired.
What help is available?
The City of Edmonton Corporate Records Management Services section provides advice,
guidance and training to departmental records coordinators.
Records Coordinators in each City department manage and coordinate record-related
activities for their departments. Although your records coordinators cannot review your
records for you, they can provide advice and training on deciding what records you need to
keep.
For more information on corporate-wide records management initiatives, or to contact your
departmental records coordinator, go to www.edmonton.ca/erecords.
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